Rohmaterialökonomie und mobilität im rheinischen allerød

Hunter-gatherer mobility in the Allerød has long been suspected to be fundamentally different from preceding and following periods due to the development of forested vegetation following the Allerød warming. Now, new primary data from a recently excavated, well-preserved Federmesser site in Wesseling can contribute to this question. An in depth analysis of the raw material use and spatial organisation of Wesseling including operational chain reconstruction, refittings, least cost analysis and statistical evaluation in comparison with other Federmesser assemblages can shed light on the mobility patterns of the Rhenish Allerød hunters. The results indicate a residential mobility pattern focused on an embedded procurement of the closest sources of raw material in a radius of roughly 100 km around the sites. In the case of Wesseling the potential route of raw material acquisition could be reconstructed to have led from the end-moraines at Krefeld, over Aachen and Bonn-Muffendorf to Wesseling. The comparison of contemporary Rhenish inventories furthermore hints at the presence of different regional systems oriented along the major drainages and topographic features as of yet insufficiently understood.